BalanceIt is a startup launched in 2020 by four
emlyon bs students willing to tackle the empowerment of women
issue through a mobile app they developed thanks to their
knowledge in coding acquired during their designing with web
class. Balance it is a mobile app which enables users to
identify firms to obtain detailed information on their good
practices and behaviors in terms of gender equality. It aims
at helping women to choose firms said to be women-friendly,
that is to say companies willing to implement good practices
for them in terms of salaries, professional opportunities,
breaking the ceiling glass, services to relieve mothers, fight
against discrimination and harassment. When the user enters in
the search bar the name of a company, the app accesses the
details of the firm and returns a color, from green to red,
which represents the firm’s grade. When its impact is judged
negatively,the app may suggest other similar firms safetier
for women.
The criteria we took on to grade firms are the following :
The first step was to produce a mindmap on our assigned theme: “Ensure women's full and effective participation in leadership at all levels of decision-making” This mindmap is what induced us to come up with an original application idea. That's why we are sharing it with you. It will allow you to understand the questions we asked ourselves and the progress we have seen in this area. But above all, we were able to find out what the needs were that had not been addressed before.
In all our mindmaps, there are some things that are the same. First, we all separated the different domains where there is a lack of women's participation. Then, we searched the origins of this problem. When we found the basis of the problem, we looked to solve the problem (at least to see how we could solve it). This was the final stage of our research: how to counter this problem, and where to fix them.
First things first, we spent a lot of time analyzing our market and learning as much as we can on women empowerment.
Yuka & Clear Fashion inspired us a lot while we were thinking about the purpose of our app :
Yuka grades food and beauty products according to their impact on
health
Clearfashion grades clothes and brands according to their
environmental, health,
animal welfare and human commitments.
To be relevant in our criteria we took inspiration from the following resources :
We realised our wireframes and then our mockups on
Figma, the
all-in-one UX/UI solution for designing websites, mobile apps, and
more. Thanks to Figma Community, we have been provided with
hundreds of files to design faster using prototypes and Wireframe
Kit.
To improve our app, we needed to collect feedbacks. To do so, we
use an amazing tool, named
Notion: it
allows you to write collaboratively and share your document
easily.
We have interviewed 2 people who were asked to be very critical. We presented them our Figma, then asked them a series of questions on the true value of our product. They were both concerned by the topic but had feelings about the figma website. They took this project very seriously because they admitted that there is a lack of women's implication in the participation and in the leadership scale. Their observations were a key factor for us to go forward in our project. Those tests were also a way to have the first return of potential users.
To conduct our tests, we used the so-called “tunnel approach” in four steps :
Running the tests helped us a lot for the following issues :
Let’s have a look to our final wireframe :
All users must be verified so as to avoid any abusive user of
the app and keep it’s credibility. On the other hand, the
review system includes objective criterias that can indicate
the quality of the workplace atmosphere for women generally.
To enhance the precision of the ranking, the user also has to
precise the precise office and location of the workplace, as
atmospheres can be different within a same company but in
different offices.